Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen. Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error. Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done. They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy. Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.

Over the last 20 years, there has been a dramatic rise in the pagan occult practice of Wicca. Wicca is a form of modern witchcraft specifically condemned in Scripture because it is a human attempt to go around God to obtain wisdom, healing, knowledge, love, and fulfillment. The increase in popularity is especially seen in the demographic of teenage girls because Wicca specifically targets teenage girls to join. There are TV series, book series, online blogs, forums, spell-casting chats, and Social Media accounts all about Witchcraft, potions, spells, and rituals, all using Wiccan symbolism and emojis. Online sisterhoods of aspiring witches offer weekly social connections and networking and work to form local covens all around the world. Here is a short story about one teen girl's experience. "Before 16-year-old Rebecca lights candles on the small altar in her bedroom each night, she says her prayers: “Hail, fair moon, ruler of the night, guard me and mine until the light. Hail fair Sun, ruler of the day, make the morn to light my way." On her altar sit four porcelain chalices representing the elements — air, water, fire, and Earth. Each contains rose petals, semi-precious stones, melted candle wax, and dried leaves. They rest on the corners of a five-pointed star. A frog symbolizing “spirit” and “life” sits on point five of the pentagram. Here, in front of her altar, Rebecca performs rituals and casts spells, all in the name of Wicca."

The five characteristics of Wicca that are most appealing to teen girls are as follows: 1. Tolerance and Openness: Wicca connects itself to popular ideas and issues of the day that seem very innocent, like mindfulness, meditation, spirituality, wellness, and sisterhood. Also, there isn't any absolute truth or moral standards within Wicca, so people are free to do what they want. This can be very appealing to a teenage girl for many reasons. 2. Female Empowerment: One of Wicca’s primary goals is to re-establish female power and usher in a new era of goddess worship. This is based in part on a flawed reimagining of history in which pre-Christian, ancient societies were matriarchal and utopian. Both Wicca and feminism share an overarching desire to replace male rule with female rule, effectively reversing gender roles rather than embracing a biblical view of men and women. Female power is viewed as not only necessary to escape the evil patriarchy but also intrinsic and natural. 3. Emotional Highs: In appealing to young females, Wicca promises a safe medium to manage and heighten one’s desires and emotions. Wiccans believe connecting with nature enables them to both receive and give extensive miraculous healing. Keep in mind that these emotional highs ultimately are not grounded in universal, consistent truth and will often lead people to create their own "truth" and, increasingly, extreme experiences and rituals. 4. Control of Your Reality: The promise of being able to influence or control your reality sounds particularly appealing to teenagers who might otherwise feel powerless. Through incantations and rituals, spells, and potions, Wicca promises an outlet for teens to manipulate power in the universe for their benefit and bend minds to their will. Once again, whenever humans attempt to manipulate or control spirit beings, the opposite happens. 5. A Virtuous Cause of Saving the World: Teens who have grown up hearing news about the rapid destruction of the environment are likely to feel compelled to do something to help stop it. Wicca seems to provide an opportunity to treat nature with great care and reverence and even elevate nature to a place of worship.

One of the main ideas within all occult, pagan practices is the intense focus and worship of created things over the Creator, such as nature, the elements, the sun, moon, and stars. Paul addresses these ideas in today's passage. Wicca is a more modern form of ancient ideas, is very much in tune with the calendar, and is connected to the worship of the Sun, Moon, and Stars. These same ideas found within Wicca go by many names: Kabbalah, Gnosticism, Mysticism, and Spiritism. They all contain the pagan idea of twisting what God created (exchanging natural sexual relations for unnatural ones) and elevating the created things over the Creator himself. This also leads to doing things people ought not to do: divination, demonic contact, ecstatic loss of control, and over-sexualizing, often with the same sex. These same ideas have been around since the fall when Eve took her eyes off of God and placed them on a piece of fruit on a tree, and her desire became for the created rather than the Creator. In fact, the word Wicca itself comes from the Anglo-Saxon word Wicce, which means to bend or shape nature to your service. The idea of Wicker Furniture is bentwood furniture, and a candle wick is twisted. It is also where we get the word Wicked, which is twisted, misshapen, or perverted. This is a very Luciferian idea to twist nature. Witchcraft itself is a work of the flesh, and man’s fallen nature expresses itself to manipulate, intimidate, and dominate. The aim of witchcraft is all about rebellion against God and working to control other people and get them to do what you want them to do. Many Wiccan views are opposite to the Gospel; Wiccans do not believe in the concept of sin and see the entire concept of sin as outdated and constraining. Therefore, they see no need for God, no need for repentance, and no need for a savior from sin. Instead, Wiccans hope to reach Summerland, the land of eternal youth, through spiritual self-improvement. Essentially, they will become their own savior. A Wiccan high-priestess, Starhawk, says: “We can now open new eyes and see there is nothing to be saved from, no struggle of life against the universe, no God outside the world, to be feared and obeyed."

We will end today's devotional with a story that shows the dangers this way of thinking leads to: "Kathy was raised in the church but rejected its teachings in her teens. She lived in Salem, Mass., a place with a history of witchcraft and many practicing Wiccans. “I was always kind of artsy, different and non-conformist,” she says. “Wicca attracted my interest because it appealed to those facets of my personality. It was certainly non-conformist, and I liked the mystery surrounding it.” So Kathy found a Wiccan high priestess who took her under her wing and taught her how to be a witch. “She told me it was all white magic, and that’s all I was interested in.” But after a few years, things turned sour. “The more I learned, the more everything started to spiral downward, deeper into darkness and black magic. I became very good at what I was being taught. My teacher never acknowledged Satan but did say there was something called ‘the abyss’ that we should avoid. For Kathy, however, that proved difficult. “One hot summer night, I was lying awake in my bedroom when all of a sudden, the room became very cold. I started to shiver and broke out into a cold sweat, although it was the height of summer. A cold wind blew in through my windows, startling me. Now, I was terrified. I hugged my knees to my chest and gasped as a swarm of what can only be described as black demons encircled my head, all laughing at me. I started screaming out my Wiccan spells to rebuke them, hoping they would disappear. That only made things worse. The laughter escalated with each spell I tried. Then, all of a sudden, I remembered my days in Sunday school as a child and the teachings of Jesus. I hadn’t thought about that for a long time. In a loud voice, I called upon Jesus Christ to rid the room of this dark presence. Instantly, they were gone, and my bedroom was once again calm and warm. My life was never the same after that."